agreed

I like our tax system in the Netherlands..
Part of the income from EUR 0 to EUR 17,579: 2.45 %
Part of the income from EUR 17,579 to EUR 31,589: 10.7 %
Part of the income from EUR 31,589 to EUR 53,860: 42 %
Above that: 52 %.

it really a pain in the ass to fill it in every year but it's I think it's fair.. we all pay the same amount of taxes over the same amount of money..

Agreed 100%. US and European corporations conducting business in China are doing so expressly and purely to avoid paying higher wages, to avoid child labor laws, to avoid 40 hour work weeks, to avoid paying workman's comp, to avoid paying benefits, and to avoid paying any taxes on their goods.

What we get are cheaper consumer goods at the cost of tens of millions living wage skilled manufacturing jobs. The trade-off is not fair because everyone suffers except the wealthy. The public sector suffers because that skilled manufacturing tax base has just been moved overseas to places like India, the Philippines, or China. Future generations suffer because their choice after high school is either: 1. Spend tens of thousands in higher education to get a degree which does not guarantee a job with a living wage, 2. Take a low pay service sector job, 3. Join the military, or 4. Start a small business with a 70% chance your small business will fail in 5 years. The remaining workers suffer because they are expected to work the equivalent of 3 jobs. Finally, the retired suffer because their pension is jeopardized with less domestic workers paying into the pension fund.

Anyone who argues "comparative advantage" is just rationalizing like a politician who has been caught taking a briefcase full of money from a lobbyist. In my first paragraph, I have already destroyed this argument.

If I was the President of the United States, here is how I would handle big business and free trade. If you as a company elect to manufacture overseas, then you have to give me a 5 years of research why the Chinese or Indians are genetically superior in creating a widget. If you do this, then every single foreign made good sold in the US will be hit with a 50% tariff based on the retail price. For example, if you are selling a video game at $60, then you have to pay $30 to the US Government.

In turn, the tariff money will be allocated to a new governmental agency called "Made in USA," which will then use the tariff funds as grants to your competitors and any small business needing financial help.

Free trade as I see it is called screwing the developed nation worker.

An easier way would be to just cut any business subsidies they get from the US government should they choose to send their jobs overseas.

Actually, if you count the largest benefit of the public service (maintaining law and order), you'd find that the rich benefit much more immensely, or else no contract would be worth the paper it's written on. The rich absolutely rely on the public order to keep their assets from being stolen and them left gutted on the sidewalk. Just because the rich don't call on the police as much as the poor doesn't mean they don't rely on them as much....

Don't forget all the millions of people that will be homeless without their living wage jobs in China...

Oh, and an economic collapse. You know they did the thing you suggest - major tariffs for overseas producers - in 1930. It was a major contributor to the depression.

Also, while i'm wary about a flat tax.

What we do need is a locked tax.

That is, say you decide that the rich get more then the poor and therefore have to pay a 33% tax while the poor pay a 11% tax.

For every 3% you raise a rich person's tax you should have to raise a poor person's tax 1%.  Furthermore, there should be no more "sin" taxes or "behavior" taxes.

Right now government and taxes and spending gets out of control because it's way to easy to say "this group should pay more taxes!"  "People hate smokers right?  Lets increase the taxes on cigarretes!"

etc.

At least those who want a flat tax are doing so because they think it's fair, unlike most liberals who's position seems to be the rich people's fair amount of tax is 3% higher then it is at any particular time.

Find a percentage you think is fair, and stick with it.  Otherwise everyones taxes get too high and the government wastes too much money because they pit people against each other.

That's why instead you just replace the coprote it with a 3-5% federal sales tax.

They'll put up with it because, hell they already are with the VAT.

What are they going to do, not sell here?  Unlike HUGE tariffs, 3-5% isn't that big, so foreign products will get slighly more expensive, but US goods will get a LOT cheaper...

and people with factories in the US who export overseas won't pay any taxes.  (Outside VAT.)

Caring about people in other countries is a luxury CEOS who have outsourced the jobs of people in their own country and bleeding heart liberals who feel pain everytime they see a Sally Struthers commercial for aid to Africa.

I am neither and a nationalist first when it comes to economic policy. So long as there are homeless and unemployed worthy of a job here in the US, then to hell with another in China who would gladly take their or my job.

You are referring to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 between the US and Europe. Funny thing is, the stock market collapse of 1929 came first. Saying Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 caused the Great Depression is akin to blaming TARP and Obama's stimulus as the reason for this current global recession.

The truth is more in the middle, where the economy of the 2000s was structurally weak with a real estate bubble coinciding with an earlier dot com bubble all under the watch of an Ayn Rand fanatic at the head of the Federal Reserve by the name of Alan Greenspan.

Here is what I see as the structural problems in the US economy:

1. Higher Education insensitive and detached from the private sector putting out too many liberal arts majors to become baristas at Starbucks, while what we really need are more engineers, scientists, urban planners, health managers, and on.

2. The largest segment of the US population (Baby Boomers) aging and retiring imposing a huge entitlement burden on Social Security, public employees pensions and Medicare.

3. Federal and State governments running up deficits to pay for insolvent entitlement programs (Social Security, public employee pensions, and Medicare).

4. Overreach of US foreign policy. We have too many troops engaged in wars that do not directly benefit US citizens. Instead they are fighting for abstract causes such as "freedom and liberty," all the while costing hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

5. Lack of a broad skilled, blue collar worker base. Since the 1980s and particularly since NAFTA in 1996, we have been transitioning into service sector economy where the bulk of jobs are in the low wage service sector who service the upper income, so-called "creative class," leading to a hollowing out of the middle class.

I think I have the bases covered except for a few wonky monetary aspects.

I think what some people need to realise is that a tax on imports (or, any form of protectionism), roughly equal to a tax on exports.

When an American buys goods from China, they want to spend in dollars, but the Chinese firms want to be paid in yuan. Therefore, a conversion takes place: at some point during the trade, X amount of dollars need to be traded in for the return of the equivalent amount of yuan.

Now, here's the important part: the people out there, who run the exchanges do so because they know that the dollar holds value. Why would a Chinese currency converter want to hold dollars, when everything they could want to buy from China has to be paid for in yuan? How would somebody benefit from giving over yuan in return for a dollar that they cannot use? Simply, they wouldn't, and the exchange would never happen, and international trade could never work.

The currency converters like the dollars, and they hold onto the dollars because they know that in the future, Chinese people will be wanting to come along and buy the dollars for yuan so that they can then buy imports in from the USA. As such, it is always true that imports = exports.

It is basic theory that current account deficits and surpluses are only a short term consequence, in the long term, all current accounts will tend back towards marginal deficits/surpluses. The reason for the huge imbalances currently is simply down to the huge imbalances in economic development - as China's economy catches and surpasses that of the USA's, the importing/exporting habits of the two nations will reverse, and trade will balance.

Given that any kind of protectionism, as Killiana1a is advocating, will stand to reduce the level of imports now, it only stands to reason that it will reduce exports in the future. With both a reduction in imports and exports, nothing is achieved, and all this results in is a reduction in economic activity all around the world.

Protectionism is, ultimately, bad for everybody, including those who are protected (and, of course, this doesn't even get into other arguments about protectionism to do with enhances alliances around the globe, reducing conflicts, and other basic economic principles such as enhanced competition, greater markets, and greater economies of scale).